MPR’s Chris Roberts talks with Minneapolis poet Dave Kapell, inventor of Magnetic Poetry Kit. They discuss the creation and interest of product.

Transcript:

(00:00:00) If reading your poetry at the Snowman burning is too public for the private poet in you though. Here's something you can try at home. It's the magnetic poetry kit a collection of over 400 words such as sausage shake and repulsive that you mount on your refrigerator. It's kind of the adult version of the refrigerator alphabet that you may have grown up with the creator of the magnetic poetry kit is Dave Capel of Minneapolis. He joins me in the studio this morning. Morning to talk about Riddles and Rhymes and things that you can create with Magnetic poetry. Good morning. Dave hikers. What made you think of this?

(00:00:39) Well, it was it was partially accidents. I have a couple years ago and I actually had some free time on my hands. I was experimenting with different ways of writing. One of those is is cut called kind of poetry where you take a letter or journal entry or newspaper or And cut it up into pieces and rearrange it and one of the drawbacks with that method of writing is that the little pieces are you know laying about and if you're like me with allergies you sneeze wants and your workers is all gone. So about the same time. I had a roommate who worked at a pizza place and she came home with a pile of fridge magnets the promotional magnets that piece of places often give out and I she gave me a pile of them and I got the idea of sticking the words on the magnets and and sticking it to a cookie sheet to alleviate my problem those wound up making their way to the refrigerator and the my roommates started messing around with them and making suggestions. They sort of became the product development team at about that time and suggested that I add word and endings to it and had good suggestions for words and so on and after that I sort of People started requesting the things you know, and I started selling them for seven dollars a piece and eventually wound up at some art shows some crash shows and went to to one show. I made a hundred of them and I thought that would be enough to make it through the weekend and they all sold in a couple of hours and

(00:02:18) oh my gosh, how did you choose the words? What was your primary source? Well, it does. I actually I have a magnetic poetry kid in front of me. I pulled some little magnets out. And here are some of the words that I pulled out of the kit essential incubate lick winter sorted. There's the makings of a poem right there man.

(00:02:41) I think there was one it was pretty much arbitrary. I think you know as you walk around and you know, listen to the little snatches of conversation that go, you know pasture your head and as your day passes, you know, there are certain words that stand out that are sort of, you know good. Good words, they have a good side. They have good connotations. They're full of connotations. I also picked try to pick a lot of words that had double meanings like for instance. There were Rose is a flower in the past tense of rise and so it can be used it has a little more utility in the kit.

(00:03:16) I wouldn't be surprised if the word sausage had appeared in a poem before but it seemed a little bit

(00:03:21) hot sausage seems to be everyone's favorite word. I'm not sure how you know how or why but I think it's one of my favorite words also. It's

(00:03:30) how well is the Poetry kit selling it's selling very very well.

(00:03:36) We sold about 50,000 of them during the Christmas season last year and they're selling in every state in the in the country and overseas in England's Australia New Zealand.

(00:03:50) Are you a businessman by

(00:03:52) Nature? No, not at all. Well, I have become one, but no, I was sort of a A slacker with a success story. I guess

(00:04:03) were you reluctantly thrust into this position of having to manage a burgeoning poetry business.

(00:04:10) Well, I was certainly in the position to to accept a little more money

(00:04:15) than

(00:04:16) I was getting at the time. I was you know data entry guy at a produce company making very little so I do like money

(00:04:26) do you think people are more interested in poetry when? It's their own when they can create it

(00:04:32) themselves. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I mean we just get tons of letters from people who have had no previous interest in poetry at all. And and once they they mess around with it a little bit and especially once they you know, the English language is such an enormous thing. It's sort of daunting for most people to face it and and try and you know, we in it down to you know, little bits of meaning That may Latin and when they're I think that when they're limited when their choices are limited to 400 words and they see them there in front of them. They just sort of move them around it helps them and help them get started and and we've got actually gotten a lot of letters from people who say that it's they've started writing their own their own poetry as a result of getting started with a with the Poetry get

(00:05:24) what kind of poetry possibilities are contained in this kit in the sense that some Oh might want to take the magnets and create a poem and put it on the refrigerator and leave it at that. But are there other things that you can do games poetry game?

(00:05:38) Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've heard of people playing games where they will take, you know, say 10 words and and You Know Each of which is sort of Scrabble I game and you know, put their ten words up and make sense out of them and but mainly I think that it's just a good way to sort of brings families together. Of their refrigerators and brings parties, you know parties always end up in the kitchen. Anyway, you may as well, you know sort of plant yourself in front of the refrigerator and you know, people are shoulder-to-shoulder real in close proximity just creating things together. And in that way it's a game.

(00:06:14) Have you gotten any suggestions from people as to what to add to the Poetry kill we need more of these kind of work we

(00:06:21) get we actually in the box. We have a little insert card where we we asked for suggestions, and so we really asked For it, we get piles and piles of letters every day and people people asking for every word you can imagine so actually what our next version of the kit that's coming out will be sort of a customer Choice version. We're going to kind of pick and choose from those those lists. But yeah, there's lots of

(00:06:48) suggestions Dave. I'm wondering if you feel like any great poetry has resulted from the magnetic poetry kit,

(00:06:56) you know, actually I we've gotten some really great. There's one that I get a guy named Derek can admire. I've got a letter from him here. He had lots of suggestions as you can see here wrote a poem using every single one of the magnets in the kit and there are some beautiful lines and one of my favorites is I recall rain smearing finger chain Lake a soused moon drooling diamonds on Bluewater

(00:07:26) a stylist a South spoon.

(00:07:28) It has soused he used the S s-- is one of the magnets or u.s. Is also another is a word ending that's in there and Edie isn't adding so out of three word endings. He made soused

(00:07:42) sows. Damona. I bet you've been Amazed by what kind of response you've gotten from people what you've tapped into

(00:07:47) here. It's yeah, it's amazing we get well, we got an email the other day from a child therapist who said that she they use toys and their therapy to elicit, you know, Responses from from the kids and she had the Poetry kit there and made a break actually. We've had two letters from two different child therapists who have made breakthroughs with their kids with the Poetry kit

(00:08:12) Dave you seem like a modest chap, but I want to ask you this question. A lot of people think we live in kind of a poetry illiterate Society where there isn't much appreciation for poetry. Do you think you're making a certain contribution? To fostering an appreciation this

(00:08:32) kid. Yeah, that's that's really what I hope but that's one of the coolest things about this this whole business and was sort of the spirit in which the thing was was started, you know, it is poetry is is not as hard as people making it shouldn't be something that's placed on a pedestal. It should be it belongs to the people. It should be performed by the people done by people the first

(00:08:59) And I thought of when I was thinking about magnetic poetry was hmm. I wonder if it's a relationship building tool.

(00:09:09) Yeah, it's a we've gotten lots of letters also about that. And in fact, it was a guy who wrote a book. I can't remember his name, but the book is called the the pocket romantic I think and he mentioned the magnetic poetry kit in his book as a romance Builder. So I think yeah, I think I think it's a good Icebreaker on it. First date

(00:09:30) romance Builder Icebreaker and if you get in a spat with your spouse or partner or a good way to make make it up, right, right, that's great. It has it been the tendency of people to

(00:09:43) rhyme a lot of yeah, it's yeah that that's another one of our common responses responses and letters is there is not enough words that rhyme how can you make poetry without any words that rhyme this? There are a few rhyming words and actually it can be done. Surprisingly enough people have have actually made some pretty good writing poems.

(00:10:04) Where do you go from here with with the Poetry kit? It kind of just exists on its own it. It's pretty pretty much self

(00:10:12) contained. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's lots of lots of words in the English language, of course, there's lots of future editions of the kit that that will will be coming out and who knows who knows how long it'll last I'm just going to enjoy it. Mmm. Well, it's here

(00:10:30) as other people are too I'd like you to read a poem that you constructed last night with a poetry kit about spraying. Could you do that? Sure.

(00:10:42) This was constructed using both the regular poetry kit in the in the kit for kids, which is our other version that goes like this. Spring is beneath the bear wet moments trudging through here. It stares up at the doggie dooz place joylessly on winter mud and asks them to blow into dreamy green sweetness to crush the silent Diamond of winter into Apple flowers and cocoons and lakes storms and frog song nights and cool Sunshine raining on Springs aching dream of Summer.

(00:11:16) Gorgeous. Thanks. What is the magnetic poetry kit done for you as a

(00:11:22) writer? Well, it's good. It's a It's a good way to as I said to get started to get some sort of kernels of ideas just the random, you know scattering of letters with it. When you look at them you two words will wind up, you know next to each other somehow in your fridge like big love say and you know, I mean that's a it's a good starting point and and especially I'm a songwriter and so it's hard to find just a place to start you know, where Out of this big life, you know, where do you start? Well, you know, sometimes if you can find a couple of words just to sort of crystallizes things to get start.

(00:12:06) Well, thanks a lot for joining us this morning. Thank you Chris. It's been really interesting. We've been talking with Dave kapow of Minneapolis. He's the creator of the magnetic poetry kit, which is available in stores as we speak.